For each 60-hour week he works on an assembly line for Foxconn, a manufacturer of electronics and computer parts
in this south China manufacturing hub, he earns $32 and a bunk in a dormitory
room with 19 other laborers.

At the factory, managers forbid workers from talking or
resting outside of two 10-minute breaks, he said.

Labor rights groups have long documented low pay and
strict management in Chinese factories. But as Western firms increasingly move
manufacturing to China to cut costs and raise profits, activists are adopting a
strategy of publicizing conditions at globally recognized companies including Foxconn, which supplies dozens of international brands,
including Apple Inc., from its Shenzhen facilities.

The goal is to pressure management to improve conditions.

A spokesman for Foxconn, the
trade name of the Taiwanese-owned firm Hon Hai
Precision Industry Co., was not available for comment on this article.

Last month, China Labor Watch, a New York-based nonprofit
watchdog group, issued a report stating that several Chinese suppliers to
Wal-Mart routinely fail to pay wages and provide health insurance as required
by Chinese law.

The survey of 16 Wal-Mart suppliers found that some pay
as little as half the minimum daily wage, provide no health insurance or
require mandatory overtime. One company provided only one bathroom for its
2,000 employees, the group said.

The report prompted Wal-Mart to investigate the
factories, and auditors found instances of underage workers and violations of
overtime laws, though not all of the companies mentioned in the report were
"direct Wal-Mart suppliers," said Jonathan Dong, a Wal-Mart
spokesman.

He explained that some products sold at Wal-Mart are
purchased from distributors, complicating efforts to monitor labor conditions.

"The suppliers [with infractions] were put on our
warning list and there will be a rigorous auditing process to follow up,"
Dong said, adding that Wal-Mart had recently increased the number of
unannounced audits it conducts worldwide.

Low wages common

Wages below government-mandated minimums — which are set
by local officials and range from $45 to $101 a month — are common in Chinese
factories, experts said. Other problems are forced overtime and poor working
conditions. A recent report by Verite, a
Massachusetts-based nonprofit organization working to improve labor practices
worldwide, found that "systemic problems in payment practices in Chinese
export factories consistently rob workers of at least 15 percent of their
pay."

Activists hope the growing focus on "shaming"
well-known companies could have a significant impact on labor standards, said
Li Qiang, director of China Labor Watch.

China is the world's largest exporter and the largest
single source of American imports. In 2005, the year for which the most recent
available data are available, factories in China shipped $163 billion worth of
goods to the United States, 30 percent more than in 2004.

Tuesday, the Commerce Department reported that the U.S.
has a $232.5 billion trade deficit with China, the highest ever recorded with a
single country.

Because the Chinese government "is most concerned
about economic growth" and has limited resources to investigate factories,
"there is growing recognition among labor rights activists that the best
way to make gains [in China's labor standards] is by publicly shaming
well-known corporations," Li said.

Conditions chronicled

That lesson was reinforced last summer after a series of
news articles chronicled labor conditions at the Shenzhen factory run by Foxconn.

In June, London's Mail on Sunday newspaper ran a story
documenting forced overtime and use of corporal punishment, including having
workers stand still for long periods and do push-ups in the factory that builds
iPods for Apple.

The story prompted a series of Chinese journalists to
investigate conditions at the factory. One Beijing Times story reported that
workers averaged 80 hours of overtime each month, far more than labor laws
permit.

Apple responded quickly, sending a team of inspectors to
the factory to interview workers and study personnel records.

In August it said that while Foxconn
complied with its supplier code of conduct in "the majority of areas
audited," management had committed some violations, including disciplining
workers by making them stand at attention, a practice Apple said it would ask Foxconn to discontinue.

While Apple's auditors found that Foxconn
paid at least the minimum wage, the audit report stated that "the pay
structure was unnecessarily complex" and that workers labored more than
six consecutive days 25 percent of the time. Chinese law requires that workers
must have at least one day off each week.

To improve what Apple considered substandard dormitories,
Foxconn committed to increasing "total living
space" by 46 percent, the report stated, adding that Apple had hired Verite to monitor compliance.

The reprimand and Foxconn's
commitment to improve practices thrilled activists.

"The Foxconn case was an
example of how publicity can have a significant impact on labor
practices," said Tai Ngai Lung, program
coordinator for the Hong Kong-based group Students and Scholars Against Corporate Misbehavior.

"The lesson is that we have to make abuses very
public."

Documenting labor abuses, is
difficult, and many Chinese companies are adept at hiding problems, experts
said.

Many managers keep double sets of books — one to track
actual accounting and one to show auditors — and coach workers how to respond
to outsiders asking about the factory.

During a recent audit in eastern China, Verite investigators found a cheat sheet for employees with
the question, "Does the company use corporal punishment?"

The prepared answer was, "Never."

Journalists keep out

Other companies, including Western firms, prohibit
journalists from facilities. Apple denied several requests to visit Foxconn facilities producing iPods
while a Foxconn spokesman said that without Apple's
permission, journalists could not visit "or we could be sued."

A sign outside a section of Foxconn's
Shenzhen campus stated that no recording devices are allowed on the grounds.

Eighteen-year-old Huang Duomei,
who had moved to the Shenzhen district of Longhua
from China's eastern Anhui province last summer, said
some workers at the factory worked "for a month straight because they want
to earn more overtime pay."

According to local and national laws, the assembly line
worker Lei Huang's weekly salary should be at least $38, slightly more than he
reported earning, said a local labor bureau official, who gave only her
surname, Li.

But determining whether laws are broken in China is
complicated because companies can deduct charges for room and board before
paying workers, she added.

Less difficult to document is China's poor workplace
safety. According to the government office in charge of work safety, 14,382
people died in "industrial accidents" in China in 2006.

Workplace safety is particularly poor in Shenzhen,
experts said. Seven died an underwear factory fire last month after sponge used
in bras "apparently blocked the only exit and emitted a poisonous
smoke," the China Daily reported.

But Chinese workers continue to seek factory jobs because
they pay more than farming.

"If people know that a computer or toy was built in
a sweatshop, they are less likely to buy it," China Labor Rights director
Li said.